Many students got to hear one of their favorite professors speak as Dr. Allen Tennison challenged us in chapel on Thursday. Tennison has been teaching at North Central University since 2011, and has been well respected since day one.

He spoke about “Calling and the Kingdom of God.”

Creating a visual based off of John Calvin’s three-fold office to help explain the ministry of Jesus, Tennison assured that each role requires anointing from God, and consists of prophet, priest and king.

He added that the ministry of the Church is the same three fold. The prophet reveals God, the priest is the sacrifice for sin, and the King is one we follow. It is a ministry where “the call to repentance becomes an invitation, not a condemnation.”

This was going to be a message that called us to learn to live in hope of the resurrection. Through this hope, we will become resistant to the world’s evil, almost in spite of it.

We laughed as Tennison warned us that this was only his introduction.

I was happy to sit back and continue listening as he discussed three temptations we face, and must resist.

1.Treating the Kingdom of God as less of a priority.

-Luke 9:59-62

Tennison related this to a woman in a grocery store praying about each item she was buying, as far as what brand of toilet paper she should choose. However not looking down on this woman, Tennison challenged, “Shouldn’t we throw out our checklists and rely on God for what questions to ask?”

2. Resist mistaking the Kingdom of God for our own kingdom

-Matthew 20:20-28

Our values should not be tied to a world that is not valuing the Kingdom of God. We are not called to be great. We are called to be godly. This world will never need us, but it will always need Jesus.

3. Resist forgetting that the Kingdom of God involves us.

-Acts 1:7-8

The very reason we are empowered by the Holy Spirit is so that we can be sent to the entire world as agents of the Kingdom. We are a part of the plan.

With an inspiration in our hearts, Tennison showed us that “when they (the world) see the joy and freedom that comes from Christ’s rule, we are living out the Kingdom of God before them.”